Before You Begin

Detailed Explanation

Have you ever wanted to make a robot move, log data for a long time, or test the algorithms that control a car all on the same technology that professional engineers use in industry every day? Many of these applications use reconfigurable I/O (RIO) technology from National Instruments.

What Is RIO?

RIO is technology incorporated in many NI hardware products such as [NI myRIO | link to ni.com/myrio], NI Single-Board RIO, and NI CompactRIO. NI RIO technology is based on an FPGA, which is a programmable chip that you can use to create your own custom hardware circuitry. Because FPGAs are reprogrammable circuits, once programmed, an FPGA runs reliably just as though you had placed a circuit on a breadboard. Also, the default clock for FPGAs when programming in NI LabVIEW software is 40 MHz, so any functionality placed on an FPGA runs fast. Finally, because FPGAs are reprogrammable circuits, you can wipe the FPGA clean and program it to do something completely different at any time.

Common RIO Devices

NI myRIO, NI Single-Board RIO, and CompactRIO are popular RIO devices that feature a processor running a real-time OS in addition to an FPGA.

You can deploy code to the real-time OS to read and write data to and from the FPGA. Code that runs on a real-time OS performs more consistently than code running on Windows OS. Windows OS shares processor time equally between all tasks—such antivirus software or updates—that are running on your machine. This is fine for basic DAQ applications. A real-time OS, however, prioritizes running your code, which is critical for control applications in industries such as aerospace, automotive, and robotics. Also, code running on NI Single-Board RIO or CompactRIO doesn’t have to be connected to a host computer, so your robot is free to run around without being connected to a PC.

For this Learn RIO series, use CompactRIO as your rugged hardware platform but remember that these concepts for interacting with this hardware apply to NI myRIO and NI Single-Board RIO as well. NI myRIO and NI Single-Board RIO share the same technology, just in a different form factor.

Now that you understand the basics of RIO technology, you’re ready to assemble, program, and use CompactRIO for a basic application.

Cumulative Project: Temperature Monitor

Ready to put your RIO skills to the test? Complete this sample project and build a temperature sensor for your RIO device.